Digital Marketing Communication

Ikea was one of the first companies to use a chatbot – they launched its virtual assistant, Anna, as a way to guide people around its website. But as times changed and technology developed, last year, Ikea decided to remove this feature.

Online personalization is ‘the ability of a company to recognize and treat its customers as individuals through personalized products or service design, personal messaging, targeted banner ads, special offers on bills, or other personal transactions’.

Retailers can contribute to consumers’ online experiences by adding social cues that enhance their flow, pleasure and arousal. Four online social cues should be considered potentially powerful marketing tools in retail website design:

2) Social Role: A tour guide may welcome visitors and thank customers when they log off. Another option is a livechat feature.

3) Interactivity: Ask the visitor to indicate certain interests or needs and respond to them in a proper way. For example, the tour guide may ask, ‘Are you looking for something specific?’, and then provide a list of options.

It also offers a system that is easy to understand in its positioning as well as assigning specific metrics to monitor, manage and measure the performance of the campaign, whether the strategy has fulfilled the specific digital marketing objectives that have been set.

1) Organization Health Check
2) Barriers & Opportunities
3) Creative Idea
4) Engagement Strategy

Some key areas to focus on are: customer, business, internal/external contexts.

a) Customer Context: This is defined by highlighting specific segments of customers who interact with your business.

b) Business Context: What is your corporate & marketing strategy? In other words, how do you differentiate your business from the competition?

c) External Context: Think about your external environment and list out who your key stakeholders are such as your:
– consumers (create personas of the types of people you attract)
– media (which media channels offer interaction with the end user?)

Below are some suggested barriers and opportunities you may consider if you are creating a communications framework for an online retailer:

– Retail Competitors: Level of competition within the market place, identify each competitor’s USP.
– Brand’s Influence: Level of influence your brand has – what domain level of trust? Relationship your brand has with your direct product suppliers, customers (repeat purchase rates?)
– Strategic Partnerships: Have you managed to create an affiliate marketing strategy and is your online proposition encouraging affiliates to buy into your vision to sell your products?

The creative idea should be developed taking into account what your objectives are.

The creative element is a brief overview on “what you plan to do and to create a storyboard or guide on how you plan to meet your objectives”.

Look to element to life by including a visual of the idea or product launch which can be crucial to ensure the promotion stands out during the campaign and acts as a sign-post to potential and existing customers.

This includes the specific tactics to be used, justifications, audience profile and how all of this is to be managed, measured and monitored.

Digital marketing offers the invaluable opportunity to assess, which elements of your strategy are working, or not in real time.

With that in mind, here are five marketing tools and techniques to help with your digital marketing communication strategy:

One of the most frequently dropped buzzwords in digital marketing, content marketing is essentially storytelling for your brand.

“Content” can be virtually anything with a clear message: a series of attention-grabbing images, videos, blog posts, or news items.

How is it different from traditional marketing?
Content marketing differs from traditional marketing tools in its resistance to overt calls-to-action or purely product- or service-based ads, and smart consumers have developed a way to distinguish quality content from useless advertising.

Content marketing is also inherently flexible. Consider ways to reframe your story or message to target different consumer groups with whom you may not have a one-to-one relationship.

You’re probably already using at least one form of social media as a way to connect with your customers – and if not, what are you waiting for? Social media is one of the best marketing tools for humanizing your brand and connecting with your customers in real time.

A strong digital marketing strategy incorporates all social media platforms appropriate to your organization, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram or Pinterest. 

It’s also vital to stay connected to new trends, such as LinkedIn’s Influencers program, which promotes industry insiders as thought leaders and offers them a forum to share wisdom.

More and more of us are accessing information on-the-go. Having a website that uses responsive design for various mobile formats – smartphones, tablets etc – gives your company a competitive edge.

Many marketers are now taking mobility a step further by using location data garnered by customer check-in tools like Foursquare or Facebook, or data provided by Adwords and GPS, to target marketing campaigns and build a more complete picture of who your customer is, where he goes, what he wants, and when he wants it.

Understanding the context of your customer’s desires and behavior is key to targeting your offerings to maximize what is actually needed. 

Since only 2-5% of traffic converts on a first visit, retargeting is a simple, powerful way to keep your brand and product in the minds of potential customers and requires little effort on the part of the company. As the technology for retargeting improves, flexible brands will stay on top of the trend to find more organic ways to raise brand profile.

The common thread in these digital marketing techniques is the need for brands to cater to the desire of consumers to be seen as individuals, and not just as a number. Brands need to prove a genuine interest in the personalities of their dynamic customer base and to treat communication as a way to build an authentic, like-minded community.

As we grow more digitally-driven, the physical community of neighborhood commerce is giving way to more fluid and larger communities online. Even brick and mortar companies are now global participants. Digital marketing offers a way to move beyond your field and into the world at large.